by
Corinna Caudill, Richard Garbera, and Maryann Sivak
Over a three and one-half year
period between the autumn of 1944 and the summer of 1947, the Polish communist
government forcibly deported approximately 650,000 individuals from
southeastern Poland. These actions
implemented Soviet and Polish nationality policies intended to legitimize the
new communist regime, to justify Soviet post-war borders along ethnic lines,
and to remove the “Ukrainian problem” as a measure to ensure the security and continuity
of the Polish state. The targeted population included the Lemkos, a group
ideologically divided about its ethno-national identity, with some identifying
as “Ukrainian” and others as “Rusyn.” Regardless of the Lemkos’ personal views
on identification, however, they would ultimately comprise approximately
150,000–200,000 of the individuals who were resettled by 1947.[1]
This article specifically describes
the resettlement campaigns that occurred between 1944–1946, during which time
the Soviet and Polish governments resettled approximately 450,000 - 500,000
people to Soviet Ukraine. We describe
how the Polish authorities implemented resettlement policies that were
initially set into motion in the fall of 1944 by the provisional Polish
communist government and the Soviet Union.[2]
In our description of these events, we have included excerpts of oral history
interviews that these authors conducted with Lemkos who experienced the events
firsthand. The participants featured in
this article include individuals who identified as “Rusyn” and “Ukrainian” and
no bias toward ethno-national identity was applied in our analysis of the
historical events.[3] The
participants’ testimonies provide insight into how Polish and Soviet
authorities carried out the various phases of resettling the targeted
population, all of whom were classified as Ukrainians, to Soviet Ukraine. We
describe how the authorities began with a propaganda campaign to encourage
“voluntary repatriation” which ultimately evolved into coercion, violence and
outright deportation.
This article will be followed by
its forthcoming companion piece, subtitled “Part II: Akcja ‘Wisła’: Resettlement
to Poland’s ‘Recovered Territories’ (Spring – Summer, 1947).” It will be featured in the next issue of the New Rusyn Times.
Encouraging “Voluntary” Resettlement through Propaganda,
Coercion and Terror
(Autumn 1944 –
Summer 1945)
The first phase of resettlement actions
occurred between Fall 1944 – Summer 1945, overlapping a chaotic period of Red
Army occupation. During that time, the Soviet Union installed a
Soviet-controlled communist government in Poland. In the summer of 1944, the interwar Polish
government remained in exile in London as the Soviets installed the Polish
National Liberation Committee (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego or
PKWN). This formally became Poland’s provisional government the following
January. The event that set the stage for the resettlements occurred on
September 9, 1944, when Soviet officials and members of PKWN met in Lublin and
signed a population exchange agreement calling for the “voluntary” resettlement
of all of “…Polish citizens of Ukrainian and Rusyn nationality”[4]
to Soviet Ukraine, a policy that would ultimately affect Lemkos who did not
identify as Ukrainians.[5]
For the Soviets, the agreement justified drawing the new borders along ethnic
lines, and allowed them to make a case for retaining territory annexed in 1939
through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (now western Ukraine.) For the Polish communists, it enabled them to
prove that they could successfully resolve “the Ukrainian problem,” an
objective that the interwar government had failed to accomplish through
assimilation and pacification policies alone.
During the same period, the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiia
Ukraïns’kykh Natsionalistiv, OUN) was planning to establish an independent
Ukrainian nation. They concentrated their operations in southeastern Poland
between 1944-1947, and their operational territory included the Lemko
ethnographic region. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukraïns’ka Povstans’ka Armiia or UPA), the military wing of the
OUN, was organized in Volyn in 1943. It became active in southeastern Poland in
1944 under OUN auspices.
On October 15, 1944, the
resettlements began with a carefully-orchestrated propaganda campaign. Soviet agents held ad
hoc meetings in villages where they extolled the advantages of relocation
to the Soviet Union. They promised that
a “paradise” awaited new settlers, with significant land appropriations, better
housing and an abundance of food.
Resettlement commissions initially targeted the Chełm (Kholm) region,
where strong communist sympathies existed among the population and the prospect
of settling within the Soviet Union was more politically appealing.[6] Many residents there also agreed to relocate
due to the growing frequency and severity of Polish underground raids that
occurred in the spring and summer of 1944.[7]
Soon afterward, other
areas were targeted, including the Lemko region. Registrations were higher in the western
Lemko counties (Krosno, Jasło, Gorlice, Nowy Sącz
and Nowy Targ)[8] where Ukrainian national identity was not as prevalent compared
to other areas in Poland.[9] For people who had no land or who had been
impoverished by the war, it seemed an attractive prospect. Some agreed to sign
up for relocation (though the vast majority did not) and many of the initial
registrants were subsequently transferred to state–run farms or collective
farms in Ukraine’s central and eastern oblasts,[10] steppe regions where
Stalin’s collectivization process had been well underway since the 1930s.[11]
Łukasz Wozniak from Binczarowa (Bilcareva, Grybów County), whose family did not register (they were eventually deported
during the “Wisła” operation), recounted the events unfolding during
that period, and described the promises made by Soviet agents:
Out of 140
families, there were 91 who went to Ukraine and only 49 families who were left
after 1945…Russian agents came to the village and they used people who were
pro-Ukrainian, who had cooperated with the teacher who was Ukrainian, and who
had sent their children to school in Ukraine. Those people accepted the idea
that they could go to Ukraine. They
convinced others from the village, their relatives, their families, their
friends, neighbors and acquaintances…what hadn’t they been promised? They were told that the fences would be hung
with sausages and that they would work one year and could relax for three years
because the chorna zem (black earth) of Ukraine was so fertile, they would have
everything. They suffered terribly because of this.[12]
Anna and Petro Pavlak, from the
village of Pielgrzymka (Peregrymka, Jasło County) were resettled in the Ternopil’ Oblast in May 1945
after registering voluntarily. Anna recalled:
The
Germans fled and the Russians came. The Russians brought with them a Ukrainian
representative who told us that we should sign up to move to the Ukraine
because people lived well there. He said that everything would be ready and
waiting for us and we would live very
well. Our village was very poor because we had a lot of people living there and
there was no work. People only lived on what they produced on their own farms.
So my family and other people signed up and left for Ukraine. When we arrived,
we found nothing waiting for us. Then the crying began. What were we going to
do there?[13]
The new Lemko settlers soon
discovered that the realities in Soviet Ukraine were grim. The “paradise” was in fact a wasteland of war-damaged
buildings and, frequently, dwellings that had been stripped of their windows
and doors by locals). They encountered oppressive collective farming practices.
In some cases they were confronted by hostile indigenous populations who
considered the newcomers to be “Poles” based on their dialect and territorial
origins. Others had set their sights on acquiring the Polish property left
behind and consequently resented the newcomers. A famine that occurred in the
Ukrainian steppe between 1946-1947 resulted in the deaths of as many as one
million people.[14]
Faced with untenable
conditions, some of the resettled Lemkos tried to return to their native
villages in Poland. This entailed illegally crossing the
border. Those who were caught were detained and sometimes
imprisoned. Some, however, managed to successfully return, usually by posing as
Polish repatriates or by hiding in freight cars. Mrs. Pavlak recalled
how she and her husband managed to return to Pielgrzymka:
My
husband came home from work and said, “It is not possible to live decently
here, even in town. We are going back home to Poland.” We took a small bag, got
on a train, and headed home. We did not buy train tickets, so we rode on
various freight trains loaded with coal until we got to the border. At the
border, encountered many people trying to run away from this ‘rich’ Ukraine. We
walked to a village near the border and my husband asked the villagers how one
could cross the border at night. At first, no one wanted to talk to us. They
thought that he might be a spy. But then one man came and said that he knew
that we were not spies because we wanted to cross the border. He told us, “Go
straight, about one kilometer, and then turn right and you will cross the
border.” It was a rainy night, so we hid until it stopped raining… soon we came
to a barbed wire fence. We crawled under the barbed wire and we were then in
Poland. We eventually came to a friendly village...the people inside were
good…they covered their windows so that the light wouldn’t shine through and we
waited there until morning and from there…we took the train and returned to Jasło without being stopped.[15]
It wasn’t long before
the truth about the “Soviet paradise” spread amongst the remaining targeted
minority in Poland. Those who had managed to return warned others about the
conditions they could really expect to find there, a message confirmed by
letters that had somehow survived Soviet censors. The message spread quickly
through village networks and was also promoted in underground propaganda
pamphlets. It is therefore not
surprising that by the autumn of 1945, there were few if any voluntary
registrations.[16]
In response, the Polish government took various steps to promote registration,
including threats of exorbitant taxes. Finally, it moved toward more forcible
measures. Some people who attempted to resist were
threatened, made to sign resettlement documents, and escorted to assembly
points by soldiers. Dmytro Ksenich, originally from Nieznajowa (Neznajova, Gorlice County)
described what happened when his family tried to resist resettlement in the
early summer of 1945:
In 1945,
after the war was over, representatives from Ukraine started to register us.
They called us to the village council and told us that if we would sign up to
go to Ukraine voluntarily, we could go anywhere we wished … to Kharkiv, to
Donetsk, wherever... They said that if we didn’t voluntarily sign up, then they
would send us to Siberia. Some of the people signed, and some didn't. My
parents did not because they didn't want to leave. Everyone else had left for
the train station and we remained in the village. Soon, some Poles came along on
a wagon and threatened to shoot us. Well, what could we do? They took our cow
from us and tied it to the wagon. They took us on the wagon to the railway
station… and put us in a freight car.[17]
Olena
Lavryk and her family, originally from Krywe (Kryve, Cisna district, Lesko County),
were initially deported to the town of Zhovten (now Yezupil, Tysmenytsia Raion,
Ivano-Frankivs’k Oblast) in May 1945. They managed to return to Poland, but
were deported again in June.
What is really bad is that they are saying we came
here voluntarily, and even now they are saying this. But it is not true. They forced us out. We wrote to them saying we were forced to come
here. We had a paper called “evacuation paper” which meant that we could
return. It was not a
deportation paper, but an evacuation
paper, and they forced us out like dogs.[18]
Such actions prompted
more organized resistance efforts among the targeted population, as well as
more recruits for UPA. In many villages in the eastern districts, UPA partisans
helped civilians to organize local village self-defense units. These were small
patrol groups called varta that
warned villagers to hide in forests during raids and deportation roundups.
Villages in areas outside UPA’s operational territory also organized
self-defense units and warning systems to alert residents to danger. Some civilians even fled to Czechoslovakia,
planning to return to their homesteads after the resettlements were over.
In some places, including
some eastern areas of the Lemko region, particularly egregious actions by the
Polish underground and civilians incited people to give up resistance efforts
and register for resettlement. The varta
were no match for random attacks by professionally trained Polish outfits that
often consisted of quasi-military units, partisans, and/or roving gangs of
bandits motivated by plunder. Ivan Bil’, from Krasna (Krosno County),
recounted the tragic events that occurred in his village in the late summer of
1945. Despite the existence of a varta,
he remembered that a Polish gang led by a “lieutenant” (most likely members of
the Polish underground) raided Krasna, robbing and killing a number of
civilians in the process. Among those murdered were Ivan’s aunt and uncle,
who had returned from deportation to the L’viv Oblast and were staying in
Krasna. His cousins were orphaned and in addition
to the carnage, their homes were ransacked.
… It was already becoming daylight, it was dawn, somewhere
around three-o’clock in the morning, and so what was there to do? They had
broken everything, they took everything, removed everything from the
house. There was not even anything left
for the children to wear. Absolutely
nothing! …they took three cows, a calf, a pig, and a pair of horses. They laid
everything out, packed it up and left. They left the children naked and
barefoot.[19]
The brutality persuaded the family
to sign up for relocation, and they were transported to western Ukraine in
September 1945.
We wanted to
stay…but when my mother's whole family was killed, we knew that we had to go in
order to avoid being killed.[20]
Despite such tactics
of violence and intimidation, many managed to avoid the initial relocation
campaigns and remained in Poland. Lemkos were
especially tied to their land and were determined to find any way possible to
avoid deportation. This included petitioning the Polish government (at both the
local and national levels), changing their religious rite to Roman Catholic to
pass themselves off as Poles, hiding in forested areas, or temporarily fleeing
south. Vasyl Mizerny (“Ren”), the commander of UPA’s “Lemko” battalion, wrote
about the desperation among villagers in Krynica (in Nowy Sącz County) that he had observed during his visit to the
area from Nov. 28 - Dec. 10, 1945:
The
villagers …are ready to do anything to obtain a reprieve from the
government…not a few are prepared at any moment to change their religion and
nationality…a lot have already done so in Wierchomla Wielka and Wierchomla Mała, some in Tylicz, and a
good number of others are keeping their change of creed a secret.[21]
Nevertheless, by
August 1945, a total of approximately 222,509 people had been relocated to the
Soviet Union.[22]
“Operation Rzeszów”: Resettlement by Military Force
(Fall 1945 – Spring 1946)
The increasing resistance to
relocation prompted Polish authorities to take more aggressive measures. In August 1945, three infantry divisions were
deployed to assist the resettlement commissions, which cited pre-war
legislation and “state security” as the legal basis for their actions.[23] This use of the regular army transformed the
“voluntary” resettlements to what unquestionably became military-driven ethnic
cleansing operations. Their numbers, including police units, totaled somewhere
between 12,000 –15,000 men.[24]
On the Soviet side, the increasing number of
deportees who were illegally returning to Poland prompted authorities to
establish virtually impenetrable fortifications along the Soviet border, a
process that was completed by November. In the meantime, Polish-Ukrainian
violence in southeastern Poland had erupted into a full-fledged civil war. UPA
units increased their efforts to disrupt resettlement operations by cutting
rail lines, destroying bridges, ambushing Polish units, and even attacking the
resettlement commissions. Underground attacks were met with reprisals. Polish
army regiments and NKVD units coordinated several attacks on villages whose
inhabitants were suspected of supporting the underground. Polish troops often
torched entire villages to hasten the deportation process and to dissuade people
from attempting to return. Frequently, UPA units burned vacated villages to
prevent Poles from the east from resettling there.[25]
Teodor Drozdyak from
Bogusza (Boguša, Grybów County) was deported during the “Wisła”
campaign, but much of his testimony focused on the period between 1945 and
1947, when his family remained in the village after many others had left for
Ukraine. He observed that the Polish army, police and civilians cooperated in
the raids and attacks, a situation that was driven not only by severe ethnic
animosities, but also by a desire for plunder.
We
hoped for better times, but the Poles turned on us and starting harassing and
robbing us. Polish authorities told us to let them know about any
harassment or attacks. The villagers set up watches every day at opposite
ends of the village and would ring the church bells if there were “bandits” in
action. They would often come to steal cattle and horses. On one
occasion, we went to the station where there was a telephone and notified the
police. The call was made at 1:15 a.m. and the police did not arrive until
the next day at 11:00 a.m. On another occasion, a bull was stolen and three
men from Krilova Ruska (now Królowa
Górna) and Boguša (Bogusza) were going to Nowy Sącz to report it to the police, but the bandits were waiting
for them on the way and killed two of them. They told the survivor that if he
didn’t want to end up the same way, he should not report any incidents.[26]
Despite the provocations, the
remaining population continued to resist resettlement to the Soviet Union at
all costs. Thus began a cycle of violence
that included deportation, UPA sabotage of infrastructure to slow or prevent
deportation, Polish raids on villages, UPA attacks on Poles (including
officials and neighboring Polish villages) and Polish reprisals (typically
involving attacks on civilians.) During that
period, army and police units, elements of the Polish underground, village
self-defense units, and roving bands massacred civilians, sometimes even entire
villages, and robbed them of their belongings with impunity.
One of the most
large-scale and brutal attacks happened in the Lemko village of Zawadka
Morochowska (Zavadka Morochivska, Sanok County). According to several accounts
(including victim and eyewitness testimonies), the 34th infantry
regiment, under the command of a Soviet officer, conducted a raid there on
January 24, 1946. They severely beat many of the villagers, killed a few, and
plundered goods and livestock. As the unit retreated toward its garrison in
Bukowsko, the soldiers were intercepted by a platoon from Stepan Stebels’ky’s
(“Khrin”) sotnia,[27] which resulted in
significant Polish losses, and many plundered items were returned to the
villagers.[28]
The next morning, the regiment returned in force, augmented by militia units
from the nearby Polish villages of Niebieszczany and Poraż. Ukrainian underground
literature contains an account of the January 25, 1946 assault on Zawadka:
…at 8 o’clock (sic), the 34th regiment, under the
command of a Soviet officer, the colonel Pluto, occupied the villages: Mokre, Vŷsočanŷ
(Wysoczany), Kamienne (sic) and Zavadka Morochivska (Zawadka Morochowska.) At 8 o’clock, they surrounded the village…The
soldiers, responding to the orders of their commanders, immediately began to
catch, beat, and to drive together the inhabitants to the village center. Those
who were caught…men as well as women and children, were beaten and (tortured)
with bayonets and wires. Their eyes were picked out, their chests, their ears,
their noses, their tongues were cut off.
The dead together with the living wounded were thrown into fire…among the
killed was a great number of children, even infants of several months…[29]
Kateryna Bilas, who
was then seventeen years old, was instructed by her mother to hide in the
forest when the Polish army approached on the morning of the 25th. When she eventually emerged from her hiding
place, she discovered that most of residents had been murdered or mortally
wounded, including her mother. Her account is harrowing, as she graphically
described the mutilations of dozens of people. The following represents only a
small excerpt of her extensive testimony, which is fairly consistent with other
accounts, including the Ukrainian Underground literature.[30]
The army started shooting and I sat in the forest until they
left. When the shooting stopped and it
became quiet, I returned to the village and found my mother murdered! I don't
know if it was from a bayonet or what...she had her throat cut and was lying on
her side. They had dragged her onto a
pile of wood and she was burning, so I ran to the well to draw some water…to
put out the fire…I walked further down into the village and found the neighbor
woman. She had a large icon of the Mother of God, and one daughter was lying on
each side of her...she was sitting and holding this icon and they had shot
through the icon, and shot both of her daughters also.... then there was a baby
girl, seven or eight months old, who was stuck on a fence spike. Her arms and
legs were shaking about, and the blood was flowing out...the baby lived for
about half an hour.[31]
Similar raids and
massacres were conducted in many villages between 1945-1946, including
large-scale massacres in the villages of Terka, Pawłokoma, and elsewhere in southeastern
Poland. Frequently, Polish militia units and bandit groups either carried out
or assisted the operations (it was often unclear to civilians who the
perpetrators were). It is clear, however, that coordinated military attacks
became more frequent and systematic in 1945 and 1946. Official Polish
documentation generally labels the victims (casualties) as “banderovtsi,”
regardless of whether or not the victims had any actual contact or
organizational affiliations with the Ukrainian underground. For example,
Internal Security troops who led a raid in the village of Gorajec in Lubaczów County on April 5, 1945
recorded that they had killed approximately 400 “banderovtsi” without
sustaining any casualties, although the UPA battalion that operated in that
region (“Zalizniak”) only totaled about 400 men, and there is no evidence in
the underground literature to indicate that a battle took place in Gorajec or
that the Zalizniak battalion had sustained catastrophic losses at that time.[32]
There is documentary
evidence proving that some high level officials in the Polish army explicitly
condoned violence against Ukrainian civilians, including a March 24, 1946
statement by General Adam Daszkiewicz, Chief of Staff of the 5th
Military District, who ordered his subordinates to “…consider all Ukrainian
males as bandits, take them into custody, and shoot a certain number of them.”[33] In addition, the frequency and brutality of
raids and attacks, as well as the participation of the local Polish militia and
“bandit” groups, suggests a political climate that engendered ethnic violence
and incentivized criminal activity. Acts of banditry, terror and murder could
easily masquerade as patriotism, and opportunistic perpetrators of such actions
were rarely punished by the authorities. Ukrainian underground literature
contains the depositions of three Polish Army soldiers who were captured by UPA
after the January assault on Zawadka. The deposition of a Polish soldier named
Kutylo Francis is consistent with the other two soldiers’ reports about the
raids and provides some insight into Polish motivations for attacks on “enemy” villages:
During the quartering (in) the village Dukla, our 3rd
battalion took part in (the) compulsory displacement action of villages Tchoka
(sic) and Tŷl’ova (Tylawa.) The inhabitants of those villages were expelled, by
force, and all their property was robbed. The lieutenant Lewicki who managed
that compulsory displacement action against Ukrainians, has in his house plenty
of robbed belongings.[34]
UPA’s actions to disrupt
the deportations, including attacks on Polish authorities, sabotage of
infrastructure, and reprisals for attacks on civilians, further motivated
Polish urgency to deport the targeted population
and deprive the insurgency of
their bases of support. At that time, Polish forces were still operating in
direct collusion with the Soviets. In the
spring of 1946 they had initiated
Operation Group Rzeszów (Grupa Operacyjna
“Rzeszów.”) Consistent with their prior modus operandi, Polish army units (commanded by Soviet officers)
were frequently augmented by Polish reserve militias and self-defense units.
Operation Rzeszów concluded on June 15, 1946
without the Polish government achieving its objective of removing the entire
population targeted for resettlement. The Soviets withdrew their tactical
assistance and dismantled their relocation machine, marking the end of the
official Soviet-Polish resettlement partnership. Events to come, including the
April 1947 ambush of Polish general Karol Świerczewski by an UPA unit near Baligród, would provide Polish authorities with a pretext for
continuing the resettlements and devising Operation Vistula (Akcja “Wisła”)
with the interrelated goals of removing Poland’s “Ukrainian problem” and annihilating
the Ukrainian underground once and for all.
To be continued in the next
issue: “Part II: Akcja ‘Wisła’:
Resettlement to Poland’s ‘Recovered Territories’ (Spring – Summer, 1947)”
All
interviews with participants were respectfully conducted with written
permission from the participants. All
rights reserved. Please do not cite or republish without the authors’
permission.
NOTES
[1] For the figures cited for Ukrainians and
Lemkos resettled in Ukrainian between 1944-1946 and during Operation Vistula in
1947, we referred to Rapawy, S. (2016), The
Culmination of Conflict: The Ukrainian-Polish Civil War and the Expulsion of
Ukrainians After the Second War. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, pp. 302,
347-348, and 427-428. See also Drozd,
R. (2012). The Ethnic Policy of the Polish Communist Regime with Regards to the
Ukrainian Population in Poland, 1944-1989. In T. Hunczak (Ed.), Zakerzonnia: The ethnic cleansing of the
Ukrainian minority in Poland, 1944-1947 (p. 44). Clifton, NJ: Organization
for the Defense of Lemko Western Ukraine, and the Lemko Research Foundation.
[2] Subtelny, O.
(2001). Expulsion, Resettlement, Civil Strife: The Fate of Poland’s Ukrainians,
1944-1947. In P. Ther & A. Siljak (Eds.), Redrawing Nations: Ethnic
Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948 (pp. 202-222). Boulder, New
York, Oxford: Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
[3] Between
2009-2014, we interviewed individuals in Poland, Ukraine and North America who
originated in villages located in the Lemko settlement region (the counties of
Lesko, Sanok, Krosno, Jasło, Gorlice, Nowy Sącz and Nowy Targ) and who had been
resettled between 1944-1947. Our study sample included ethnic Lemkos who
self-identified as both “Ukrainian” and “Rusyn.”
[4] Misilo, E (2002).
Polish Pre-war Legislation in Regard to the Post-war Deportation of the Lemkos
(1944-1946). In The Lemko Region, 1939-1947: War, occupation and deportation (P. J. Best & J. Moklak, Eds.). Cracow:
Historia Iagellonica Press, pp. 75-82. The people targeted for
deportation included nonpolitical and Rusyn-oriented Lemkos who did not embrace
a Ukrainian national identity, but were targeted for deportation based on how
Polish and Soviet authorities viewed them in terms of their official ethno-national
classifications.
[5] See Kordan, B. (1997). Making Borders Stick:
Population Transfer and Resettlement in the Trans-Curzon Territories,
1944-1949. International Migration Review, 31(3), 704-720.; See also
Drozd, pp. 35-36 in Hunczak, T. Zakerzonnia.
According to Drozd, approximately 742,452 Poles and 33,105 Jews were also resettled
between 1944-1946.
[6] The Chełm (Kholm)
region had been part of Russian empire before World War I. Consequently, many
young men from the region had served in the Russian army had been influenced by
communist propaganda and formed political committees.
[7] See Ther and
Siljak. p. 174
[8] For clarity and
consistency, we have used Polish toponyms in this paper, with Rusyn or Ukrainian
toponyms placed in parenthesis where appropriate.
[9]
Although
there was some OUN presence in the western Lemko region, including Mykhailo
Fedak’s (“Smyrni”) self-defense units, this territory wasn’t specifically in
UPA’s operational zone until late 1946. OUN had some presence until 1946 when
one unit (Brodych sotnia) went there from Sanok area. There was also much less
military action in this region where Ukrainian identity wasn’t as prevalent compared
to the eastern Lemko region.
[10] Between April and
September of 1945 there were 23 convoys, all from Kraków province going to Voroshylovhrad (Luhan’sk) transporting a
total of 6,663 people. See http://www.library.lg.ua/zip/lemki.pdf , p.10. (Accessed
4/23/2014.) See also http://zakerzon.livejournal.com/8388.html, which states
that more than 12,000 Lemkos were settled to Luhan’sk between 1944-1953
(Accessed 4/23/2014)
[11] The northern and
western Ukrainian oblasts (including part of Volyn) had been part of interwar
Poland until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact resulted in Soviet annexation in the
autumn of 1939. See Subtelny, p.158 in Ther and Siljak (Eds).
[12] Łukasz Wozniak [Interview by R.
Garbera]. (2012, July).
[13] Anna Danylo
Pavlak, [Interview by Corinna Caudill and Maryann Sivak]. (2011, September).
[14] See Ellman, M.
(2000). The 1947 Soviet famine and the entitlement approach to famines. Cambridge
Journal of Economics, 24(5), 603-630. It
is important to note that a large proportion of the resettled people (including
Lemkos) were placed on collective farms (kolkhoz)
and state-run farms (sovkhoz) in the
eastern oblasts of Ukraine; including the Sumy, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kirovohrad,
Odesa, Mykolaiv, Stalino (now Donetsk), Dnipropetrovsk and Luhansk oblasts. A severe drought in the
spring of 1946 resulted in a poor harvest in these regions. The problem was
exacerbated by poor agricultural mechanization, low agricultural output, high
grain procurement quotas (and low procurement prices), restrictions on private
trade, as well as administrative inefficiency and corruption. This confluence of factors resulted in acute
food shortages in rural areas. A famine began in the second half of that year
and reached its peak between February and August of 1947, resulting in the
total famine-related deaths of approximately one million people by 1948.
[15] Caudill and
Sivak, Pavlak interview.
[16] See Subtelny in
Ther and Siljak, p. 159
[17] Dmytro Ksenich [Interview
by Corinna Caudill and Maryann Sivak]. (2011, October).
[18] Olena Lavryck [Interview
by Corinna Caudill and Maryann Sivak]. (2011, October).
[19] Ivan Bil’ [Interview
by Corinna Caudill and Maryann Sivak]. (2011, October).
[20] Ibid.
[21] Cisek, J. (2012),
650 Lat Tylicza Dawnego Miastka,
Tylicz, p.114.
[22] See Subtelny p.
160 in Ther and Siljak. See also Bilas, I. (1994) Represyvno-Karalna Systema v Ukraïni 1917-1953: Suspilno-Politychnyi ta
Istoryko-Pravovyi Analiz: U Dvokh Knyhakh, Vol. I, p. 224.
[23] See Horbal, B. (2010). Lemko studies: A handbook. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs,
p. 423. See also Misiło in The Lemko Region, pp. 75-82.
[24] See Subtelny in
Ther and Siljak, p. 160.
[25] Ibid, p. 167.
[26] Teodor Drozdyak
[Interview by Corinna Caudill and Maryann Sivak]. (2011, September).
[28] See the memoir of
Anna Babiak (2012) in Za to że jesteś
Ukraińcem Wspomnienia z lat 1944-1947 (B. Huk, Ed.), Koszalin, pp.
42-49. See also Smoleński, P. (1998).
Ukraińcy w Polsce, Historia stosunków polsko-ukraińskich, Gazeta Wyborcza, Warsaw, and Lyko, I., Zavadka Morokhivs’ka in Annals of Lemkivshchyna (Hvozda, I., Ed.),
Vol. 3., pp. 77-86.
[29]
Potichnyj, P.
(Ed.) (1988) Litopys Ukrainskoyi
Povstanskoyi Armii: English Language Publications of the Ukrainian Underground.
Vol. 17. Toronto: Litopys UPA, p. 20.
[30]
For the
Ukrainian account, see Potichnyj, Litopys
Vol. 17, pp. 17-27. Also see articles by Smoleński and Lyko.
[32]
In
his forthcoming book The Culmination of
Conflict: The Ukrainian-Polish Civil War and the Expulsion of Ukrainians After
the Second World War (Ibidem Press: April 2016), historian Stephen Rapawy noted
that these figures are highly unlikely since the entire UPA battalion that
operated in that region (“Zalizniak”) was comprised of 400 men, the casualties
were not recorded in underground literature, and the battalion was clearly not
eliminated by this point in time. See also Potichnyj, Litopys Vol. 30, p. 375,
and Misiło, E. (Ed.). (1996). Repatriacja czy deportacja: Przesiedlenie
Ukraińców z Polski do USRR 1944-1946 (Vol. I). Warszawa: Archiwum
Ukraińskie. p. 104.
[33] See Drozd in
Hunczak (Ed.), pp. 30-31.
[34] See Potichnyj (Ed.),
Litopys Vol. 17, p. 28.
